Was this illegal?

[SwankyBarbecue4]

My friend and I installed TeamViewer on a school computer during class today so we could access it from home to monitor the progress of the 3D printers in the building so we could stop the printer remotely if we saw something was wrong over a live remote camera feed from inside the printer. After school I logged on and installed Dropbox, Log Me In Hamatchi, and Java JDK to run a bukkit minecraft server off of the computer lol (the bukkit files were running from inside my Dropbox so bukkit was not installed in any sort of fashion). After I got home around 9pm, I started messing around till about 10:30 when I began to see all of my open windows slowly close one by one, so I quickly logged off. The only problem was that I was logged into my personal Dropbox and teamviewer accounts so they most likely have my name. The computers are running DeepFreeze so any changes I made can be easily reverted by just restarting the computer, and you do not need any sort of administrator level access to install or uninstall programs. So I assume it is not illegal since I did not install malicious programs or achieve administrator level access without permission. Right?

[Blebekblebek]

This is ridiculous.

" Look I did something on a computer which I don't have right to mess it up, and it's OK, right? "

[SwankyBarbecue4]

Just now, Blebekblebek said:

This is ridiculous.

" Look I did something on a computer which I don't have right to mess it up, and it's OK, right? "

Yea, ik, so pretty bad?

[Blebekblebek]

1 minute ago, SwankyBarbecue4 said:

Yea, ik, so pretty bad?

 

it's like saying " My car has insurance so, it's okay to crash it. Right? "

I know you still have long life to go, but being ignorant is not an excuse.

 

[Seamonster420]

The question is immaterial. Legal or not you can and probably will get in deep shit with the school if you got caught. You probably won't face legal consequences but you might get detention or get suspended, might have your computer lab privileges revoked and and receive an automatic fail in your class for misusing school resources. Hope it was worth it.

[SwankyBarbecue4]

6 minutes ago, Blebekblebek said:

 

it's like saying " My car has insurance so, it's okay to crash it. Right? "

I know you still have long life to go, but being ignorant is not an excuse.

 

I agree that it was a stupid move not that I look at from a different perspective, but what is your prediction for the level of punishment? I go back to school on Tuesday and Friday is my final day lol so is there a chance it might slide?

[AlexTheGreatish]

How chill are the admins?  It's not like you were doing anything terrible, so if I had to guess they'll just tell you not to do it again, but it really depends on who the admin is.

[SwankyBarbecue4]

Just now, AlexTheGreatish said:

How chill are the admins?  It's not like you were doing anything terrible, so if I had to guess they'll just tell you not to do it again, but it really depends on who the admin is.

Lol, well I am pretty chill with my principle and I think the admins consist of memebers of my town's school board so no clue I guess. But was that truly illegal? Are there any laws in place that you know of that would still apply even though I didn't "hack" anything and it was all open to me?

[AlexTheGreatish]

I can't comment on the legality of it, but if I had to guess you'll be fine.  If they ask you about it just straight up tell them what you were up to and chances are they'll just have a laugh and move on, it's not like you were hosting a porn site or installing wanna cry.

[SwankyBarbecue4]

7 minutes ago, AlexTheGreatish said:

I can't comment on the legality of it, but if I had to guess you'll be fine.  If they ask you about it just straight up tell them what you were up to and chances are they'll just have a laugh and move on, it's not like you were hosting a porn site or installing wanna cry.

I plan on comming clean, thank you!

[Mooshi]

looool my old highschool had Deepfreeze. Relax guys, a literal restart reverts back to the original imaged OS. There is zero chance of actually breaking anything. I personally find this hilarious.

[AccordingOne]

Question of legality is always heavily related to country of which we're talking about. Your school may have its own legal regulation also. To be fair, permission of the owner is usually required, to use his property in any way and it's applying to your case. I assume you had no such premission. But it should be noted that you did no harm to school property (based on what you said) so it shouldn't have any real legal consequences i think. Though it is depending on your school and your country regulation. You may be expelled from your school in worst case scenario.

[SwankyBarbecue4]

7 minutes ago, AccordingOne said:

Question of legality is always heavily related to country of which we're talking about. Your school may have its own legal regulation also. To be fair, permission of the owner is usually required, to use his property in any way and it's applying to your case. I assume you had no such premission. But it should be noted that you did no harm to school property (based on what you said) so it shouldn't have any real legal consequences i think. Though it is depending on your school and your country regulation. You may be expelled from your school in worst case scenario.

Haha you're right

[Kamina]

It'd be hard to prostitute you on anything serious, legality wise.

 

Just remember to respect the school's property. If you're caught, own up to it and apologize. 

[yathis]

Again with the legalities of nothing to do with actual law.

[Guest]

I agree with some of the other people. Just admit your wrongdoing, apologize and don't do it again. I doubt you'll get in serious trouble, but be prepared just in case. Hope it works out for you!

[WeeemRCB]

Technically TeamViewer was an illegal install.

 

Although you were using it for personal use, it was installed on a computer and over a network belonging to the educational facility which would mean you need a non-personal licence to use it on that machine.

 

 

[LAwLz]

What you did was not illegal, but that does not mean you are innocent and can't get in trouble. Just tell your computer admin what you did, that you realize that you shouldn't have done it and apologize. If he's a good dude then nothing bad will happen.

By the way, be happy that whoever found your computer did not do anything bad with it. Leaving a school computer logged into teamviewer, dropbox and potentially other programs is a terrible idea. The person who found the computer could have done anything. Might as well have given him the keys to your house while you were at it.

 

NEVER leave a public PC logged in to anything again. I would avoid logging into anything at all on public computers. You never know what nasty stuff might be running or logging what you do.

 

 

7 hours ago, WeeemRCB said:

Technically TeamViewer was an illegal install.

 

Although you were using it for personal use, it was installed on a computer and over a network belonging to the educational facility which would mean you need a non-personal licence to use it on that machine.

Correct me if I am wrong, but aren't TeamViewer licenses depending on what you use them for, not who owns the computer?

[sgzUk74r3T3BCGmRJ]

?

[iamdarkyoshi]

I used to remote into my fileserver to bypass the school's internet filter, visiting whatever websites I needed to, downloading files, and then getting to the downloaded files via my fileserver's web GUI. The IT guys were perfectly fine with this...

 

Honestly if they didn't want you to do it, they would have put more restrictions on the PC. You weren't bypassing any of them like I was. I wouldn't worry about it.

[JAKEBAB]

On 5/26/2017 at 4:50 PM, Kamina said:

It'd be hard to prostitute you on anything serious, legality wise.

Yes. Prostitute him....

 

Op you must have a lot of faith in your school for leaving shit logged in lol. I would say what you did was fine until you installed a minecraft server... that was just stupid. Doubt anything will happen, i would think you would of had a call from the school by now if they knew or cared.

[TheComputerdude]

On 5/26/2017 at 1:17 AM, SwankyBarbecue4 said:

Lol, well I am pretty chill with my principle and I think the admins consist of memebers of my town's school board so no clue I guess. But was that truly illegal? Are there any laws in place that you know of that would still apply even though I didn't "hack" anything and it was all open to me?

EDIT: Ignore bellow  cause I thought you lived in America

ok read bellow because America is similar. Unauthorized access to a computer system is illegal. This all depends on if you had authorization to acsess the computer which I would guess would be yes 

EDIT: Important bit from down bellow that still basically applies to you

So technically maybe yes because you accessed and modified ie installed team viewer data held in the computer. The question is did you have authorization. If you have computer lab privileges and there were no checks to prevent you from using team viewer I would argue that you did have authorization. I am NOT A LAWYER AT ALL. THIS IS ALL FROM 2 MINUTES OF RESEARCH AND MY INTERPRETATION OF AUSTRALIAN LAW. That being said your local or municipal laws could be more strict. This is material as the chances of you being prosecuted are slim to none. I would even argue that this may not have been against the rules. Explain what you were doing. It is rational to look at a 3d print and have the ability to stop it if shit goes wrong. You don't want to waste filament that the school is paying for after all. That is how I would approach it. Tell them you were trying to do a good thing and didn't ask permission. Speaking of permission If you have an agreement with the school on technology use then LOOK AT IT. Does it have a clause that says you are not allowed to install software? If not then you didn't do anything wrong IMAO. Especially if there were no admin prompts. If it does though.... You could get in big trouble at school ie detention, suspension, failing class, loss of computer privileges. This is where I would pull the whole I was trying to do a good thing and didn't ask permission explanation. Good luck man

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you live in australlia this might be usefull info if not ignore this I am just keeping it for transperancy

 

 

depends on where you live ohh you live in austalia cool let me look up australlia laws real fast (I was going to quote american law because it is horribly simple)

Ok austallian law is 

Quote

The Criminal Code Act Division 477-478 outlines the serious computer offences, such as hacking, that can be prosecuted at the federal level.  Division 477.1 of the Criminal Code Act states:

 (1)  A person is guilty of an offence if:

                     (a)  the person causes:
                              (i)  any unauthorised access to data held in a computer; or
                             (ii)  any unauthorised modification of data held in a computer; or
                            (iii)  any unauthorised impairment of electronic communication to or from a computer; and

(b)  the unauthorised access, modification or impairment is caused by means of a carriage service; and

                     (c)  the person knows the access, modification or impairment is unauthorised; and
                     (d)  the person intends to commit, or facilitate the commission of, a serious offence against a law of the Commonwealth, a State or a Territory (whether by that person or another person) by the access, modification or impairment.

9

 

So technically maybe yes because you accessed and modified ie installed team viewer data held in the computer. The question is did you have authorization. If you have computer lab privileges and there were no checks to prevent you from using team viewer I would argue that you did have authorization. I am NOT A LAWYER AT ALL. THIS IS ALL FROM 2 MINUTES OF RESEARCH AND MY INTERPRETATION OF AUSTRALIAN LAW. That being said your local or municipal laws could be more strict. This is material as the chances of you being prosecuted are slim to none. I would even argue that this may not have been against the rules. Explain what you were doing. It is rational to look at a 3d print and have the ability to stop it if shit goes wrong. You don't want to waste filament that the school is paying for after all. That is how I would approach it. Tell them you were trying to do a good thing and didn't ask permission. Speaking of permission If you have an agreement with the school on technology use then LOOK AT IT. Does it have a clause that says you are not allowed to install software? If not then you didn't do anything wrong IMAO. Especially if there were no admin prompts. If it does though.... You could get in big trouble at school ie detention, suspension, failing class, loss of computer privileges. This is where I would pull the whole I was trying to do a good thing and didn't ask permission explanation. Good luck man

 

 

[TheComputerdude]

On 5/26/2017 at 0:51 AM, SwankyBarbecue4 said:

My friend and I installed TeamViewer on a school computer during class today so we could access it from home to monitor the progress of the 3D printers in the building so we could stop the printer remotely if we saw something was wrong over a live remote camera feed from inside the printer. After school I logged on and installed Dropbox, Log Me In Hamatchi, and Java JDK to run a bukkit minecraft server off of the computer lol (the bukkit files were running from inside my Dropbox so bukkit was not installed in any sort of fashion). After I got home around 9pm, I started messing around till about 10:30 when I began to see all of my open windows slowly close one by one, so I quickly logged off. The only problem was that I was logged into my personal Dropbox and teamviewer accounts so they most likely have my name. The computers are running DeepFreeze so any changes I made can be easily reverted by just restarting the computer, and you do not need any sort of administrator level access to install or uninstall programs. So I assume it is not illegal since I did not install malicious programs or achieve administrator level access without permission. Right?

Post how this ends I am curious

[yathis]

There is a difference between illegal and against the rules. Against the rules have no relation to legality at all. illegal has everything to do with legality, but they key to that is you are innocent if you dont get caught.

[Zodiark1593]

On 5/25/2017 at 9:51 PM, SwankyBarbecue4 said:

My friend and I installed TeamViewer on a school computer during class today so we could access it from home to monitor the progress of the 3D printers in the building so we could stop the printer remotely if we saw something was wrong over a live remote camera feed from inside the printer. After school I logged on and installed Dropbox, Log Me In Hamatchi, and Java JDK to run a bukkit minecraft server off of the computer lol (the bukkit files were running from inside my Dropbox so bukkit was not installed in any sort of fashion). After I got home around 9pm, I started messing around till about 10:30 when I began to see all of my open windows slowly close one by one, so I quickly logged off. The only problem was that I was logged into my personal Dropbox and teamviewer accounts so they most likely have my name. The computers are running DeepFreeze so any changes I made can be easily reverted by just restarting the computer, and you do not need any sort of administrator level access to install or uninstall programs. So I assume it is not illegal since I did not install malicious programs or achieve administrator level access without permission. Right?

Read your school's terms of service. If there are (most likely) provisions that forbid the install of software, or certain connection protocols, then it is illegal. If a ToS exists, but such provisions are absent, then you will probably be fine. In absence of a ToS, then it really is up in the air as to the legality, though given property rights, you are probably still performing illegal activity.

 

That said, since all changes are reverted anyway, and the admin proceeded to eliminate any evidence by shutting down the system, the likelihood of you being prosecuted (let alone successfully convicted) are extraordinarily small, at least, so long as you stop short of anything actively malicious or attention-grabbing.

 

Even with DeepFreeze, I wouldn't show any mercy to those that think they can run a Ddos attack using school computers.